Valerie June Announces New Album, 'Owls, Omens, and Oracles', Out April 11th + Lead Single, 'Joy, Joy!'

GRAMMY-nominated singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Valerie June announces her new album, Owls, Omens, and Oracles, out April 11th via Concord Records, and releases its lead single "Joy, Joy!" alongside an accompanying video. Rooted in the belief that what we focus on is what we manifest, June dreams a songpath forward with Owls, Omens, and Oracles that leaves no one behind. Halfway through a decade of immense and rapid global change, June asserts a multidimensional Blackness steeped in laughter, truth, magic, delight, and interdependence. This album is a radical statement to break skepticism, surveillance, and doom scrolling – let yourself celebrate your aliveness. Connect, weep, change, open.
 
June has been softening and clarifying her sound since the 2013 release of Pushin' Against A Stone, through The Order of Time, The Moon and Stars: Prescriptions for Dreamers, and Under Cover. "A willed and unblinking optimism courses through Valerie June's songs" (New York Times); this newest work shows her own spiritual growth and the opening of ancestral channels into both her dynamic and distinct voice and her tender lyrics. June is not alone in crafting this sacred field for the contemplation of love and being human. Produced by M. Ward (Mavis Staples, She & Him) and engineered by Pierre de Reeder (Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis), Owls, Omens, and Oracles also features a cast of contributors, including The Blind Boys of Alabama and Norah Jones.
 
An instant foot-stompin' hip-shaker, lead single "Joy, Joy!" opens the album with an undeniable exuberance. June, playing acoustic guitar, sings: "And when you feel you're not enough / Has this old been hard and rough / A golden seed beneath dark soil / To seek the sun is often rough" while backed by Kaveh Rastegar on bass (John Legend, Beck), Steven Hodges on drums (Tom Waits, David Lynch), and keys and horn arrangements by Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band). In line with praise by the New Yorker, "[June's] every quiver bespeaks emotional honesty."